1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for operating at least one virtual network on a substrate network, especially within a framework of a self-organizing model for optimizing resource consumption of the substrate network, wherein the virtual networks are comprising a plurality of virtual nodes each being assigned to respective substrate nodes of the substrate network and wherein two adjacent virtual nodes of the same virtual network are connected by a virtual link which is corresponding to one or more respective substrate node links. Further, the present invention relates to a virtual network environment on a substrate network, especially within a framework of a self-organizing model for optimizing resource consumption of the substrate network, wherein the virtual networks are comprising a plurality of virtual nodes each being assigned to respective substrate nodes of the substrate network and wherein two adjacent virtual nodes of the same virtual network are connected by a virtual link which is corresponding to one or more respective substrate node links.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network Virtualization is meant to be able to run several service-specific applications on the same networking infrastructure. Also it is useful for the separation between different users, services, and ISPs (Internet Service Provider). Finally, virtualization in the IT world has been successful mainly because of the freedom for data center operator to move the virtual machines based on business and resource usage objective.
In network virtualization we also see a major benefit of moving virtual network nodes fairly free from one physical to another physical node achieving better balance resource usage pattern (traffic engineering in virtual networks), enables non interrupted shutdowns for physical resources for maintenance, and enables reliability through duplicating traffic (work only for certain services running within the virtual network).
The operation of moving a virtual IP router or node from one physical node or substrate node to another has been proposed and shown by Yi Wang, E. Keller, B. Biskern, J. Van der Merwe, J. Rexford, “Virtual Routers on the Move: Live Router Migration as a Network Management Primitive.”
The increasing demand of multimedia services over the Internet is pushing for new methods to allocate resources in future networks. For example, IPTV services are expected to become more and more popular and integrated offers, like the triple-pay packages, require cost-effective strategies for resource allocation. In fact, a typical IPTV network infrastructure requires significant investments for the distribution network, in terms of guaranteed bandwidth as well as available storage capacity. Normally, these resources need to be planned and well dimensioned in advance, before upper services can be actually deployed. This is obtainable from N. Degrande, K. Laevens, D. D. Vleeschauwer, and R. Sharpe, “Increasing the User Perceived Quality for IPTV Services”, IEEE Communication Magazine, vol 46, no. 2, pp. 94-99, 2008.
The costs of deploying a physical infrastructure may prevent many service providers to get into the market, like in the case of IPTV services. For reference, see S. Han, S. Lisle, and G. Nehib, “IPTV Transport Architecture Alternatives and Economics Considerations”, IEEE Communication Magazine, vol 46, no. 2, pp. 70-77, 2008. Nevertheless, recent works in the field of virtual networks offer a viable alternative that promises to cut costs by sharing the infrastructure among different service providers. For reference, see N. Niebert, I. E. Khayat, S. Baucke, R. Keller, R. Rembarz, and J. Sachs, “Network Virtualization: A Viable Path Towards the Future Internet”, Journal Wireless Personal Communications, vol 45, no. 4, pp. 511-520, June 2008. The key on network virtualization is of dividing the physical network infrastructure into several slices and associating them to different virtual providers.
The deployment of virtual networks must observe two different perspectives. The former is the perspective of a virtual provider, who wants the accomplishment of the contracted resources—SLAs (Service Level Agreement) must be maintained—while the later regards to the physical infrastructure provider, who wants to save as much as possible its physical resources in order to maximize revenues.
Being this, efficient algorithms to allocate physical resources (links, CPU, and storage capacity) must be put in place by physical providers; otherwise punctual high loads on multiplexed physical resources may create resource scarcity that can prevent the deployment of new virtual networks. Traditionally, physical resources are allocated in the initial planning phase: a planning tool—see D. Agrawal, M. S. Beigi, C. Bisdikian, and N. Lee, “Planning and Managing the IPTV Service Deployment”, in Proceedings of 10th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM2007), 2007, pp. 353-362—provides the estimated dimensioning of network components given a certain SLA and resources are allocated based on this output. This approach can be applied for small virtual environments, but in large scale deployments a static allocation cannot take in account the mass imbalance of users' requests between different locations.